Roasted Turkey with Herbed Butter

Recipe Description:

This is a simple and delicious recipe that really allows the flavor of the turkey to shine. It’s about as traditional as you can get! We made a 14 pound turkey, but just adjust the ingredients and cooking time as needed.

Recipe Instructions:

Preheat oven to 325 F.
In a medium glass bowl, cream butter with herbs, garlic, salt and pepper to taste, mix well and set aside.
Pat your turkey dry. Make sure to remove any giblets from inside the cavity, saving for gravy or stock.
Using your hand or a butter knife, carefully loosen the skin from the breast meat, leaving it attached but creating a pocket between the skin and meat. Be careful not to tear the skin. Here is a video that shows how this is done (ignore the vegetable oil portion of the video! lol)
Once you have created a pocket between the breast meat and skin, fill it with all but about 3 TBL of your herbed butter mixture, working it over the entire breast under the skin. (again, refer to the video above for a visual)
Wash your hands and then season the outside of the turkey with salt and pepper. Rub the remaining herbed butter mixture over the outside of the turkey, covering the breast, legs and underside of the bird.
Place the apple, onion, lemon pieces and rosemary sprigs inside the cavity of the turkey. In a large (not non-stick!*) roasting pan, fitted with a rack, place turkey, breast side up, on rack. Tuck wings back under the turkey, and tie feet together with butcher’s twine, crossed. (You can cook the turkey breast side DOWN until you remove the foil (below) at about 45 minutes from the end of cooking, when you will flip it breast side up. I actually almost always cook it this way, but it can be a little tricky to flip, and I have had a turkey come apart and I almost dropped it one year, lol, so I advise doing this only if you want to tackle it. :) It does keep the turkey very moist!)
Cover tightly with foil and place in preheated oven and roast at 325 F for about 15 minutes per pound of turkey. (Or until juices run clear and internal temp is 165 F) A 12-14 lb turkey should take around 3 1/2- 4 hours to cook. To promote browning, remove foil during the last 45 minutes or so of cooking.
Remove turkey from oven. Remove apple, onion, lemon and rosemary from inside cavity and discard. Do not eat these. Move turkey carefully to a platter and let rest for about 15 minutes. Reserve juices, skimmed of the majority of fat, for gravy or reduction sauce.
Herbed Reduction Sauce for TurkeyIn medium saute pan over high heat, bring turkey drippings/stock to a boil. When reduced by about half, add lemon juice and white wine if using. Sprinkle in herbs and couple of cracks of black pepper. Add garlic.
Taste and adjust salt, but be careful here, salt has concentrated during the reduction and you will probably not need to add any. I never do.
Swirl in butter and allow it to reach desired consistency.
Serve over your gorgeous roasted turkey and enjoy!
*If you only have a non-stick coated roasting pan, please cover it with parchment paper completely. This will help to minimize contact with your food and the toxic non-stick surface.